On the final day of the individual events of the 2009 Fencing World Championships, Russia and Germany added gold medals as the US fencers make an early exit.
Russia earned another world championship title as Lubov Shutova bested Canada's Sherraine Schalm 9-8 in overtime in the women's epee event. Germany added a gold medal in men's sabre to go with their men's foil bronze as Nicolas Limbach bested Romania's Rares Dumitrescu 15-11.
The US fencers fell early in this final day of individual competition. In men's sabre Tim Morehouse, James Williams, and Ben Igoe all lost their first round matches. Daryl Homer won his first match 15-13 against Oleksandr Torchuk (UKR), but then lost to Spain's Jorge Pina 15-12. In the women's epee competition the US had two fencers make today's round of 64. Courtney Hurley lost to Nathalie Moellhausen (ITA) and Lindsay Campbell lost to Bianca Del Carretto (ITA).
Correction: On Sunday the article on men's epee was in error. We had reported that US fencer Ben Bratton was eliminated in the first round of direct eliminations. In fact, he won the first round and lost in the top-64. The corrected version of the article can be found here.
Women's Epee Final
Women's epee featured a tense final bout as the first period ended with the Russian Shutova clinging to a 6-5 lead over Schalm. In the second period, Schalm pinned Shutova at the end of the strip and used the extra pressure to set up a touch to tie the bout at 7. Unlike the previous bouts, neither fencer was able to dominate the direction of the bout in the first two periods. The fencers slowed the action down to a crawl as neither could set up their favored actions and the 3rd period ended in an 8-8 tie.
Starting the final overtime period, Shutova won priority, forcing Schalm to score a touch in the overtime 3 minute period. With only 20 seconds remaining in the overtime period, Shutova scored on Sutova scored on an attack with 20 seconds left in the overtime period.
In earlier semi-final action each Shutova and Schalm each dominated the direction of their bouts. Lubov Shutova (RUS) wasted no time and crushed Ukranian Anfisa Pochkalova 15-3. The match featured Shutova controlling the actions from the very beginning and never letting up.
The second semi-final was more evenly matched as Canada's Sherraine Schalm matched up against a much taller Sonja Tol (NED). Schalm used her greater athleticism to bait Tol's attack and hit with a series of actions into Tol's preparation of after Tol's first attack failed. Tol seemed to find the answer early in the second period as she executed some long attacks to score, but Schalm was able to solve for that problem, rattle off a few double-touches and calmly counter Tol's final desparation attacks.
Men's Sabre Finals
In the men's sabre event Limbach matched his fast attack against Dumitrescu's ability to pull distance and launch well timed counter attacks. Limbach seemed well prepared for Dumirescu's actions, and followed the plan of taking over the attach throughout the bout. Limbach was caught early on by Dumitrescu's ability to get out of range of the attack and then jump back inside for the counter-action and Dumitrescu lead at the break 8-7. Limbach made the adjustment to keep his attack moving forward and neutralized the Romanian's ability to score, and took over the match to win 15-11.
Earlier, Limbach had done much the same thing in a 15-9 win over Italian fencer Luigi Tarantino. As Tarantino looked to attack, Limbach was just faster off the line and was able to win his actions. A frustrated Tarantino seemed out of the match with 3 touches to go and could not pull himself back into the match. During the other semi-final bout, Dumitrescu used his height advantage over Tamas Decsi of Hungary to catch Decsi with early counter-attacks. Dumitrescu won that match 15-10.
On the final day of the individual events of the 2009 Fencing World Championships, Russia and Germany added gold medals as the US fencers make an early exit.
